It’s amazing how much space, time and energy is required to grow enough food for 20 people. I’ve felt my feet dragging the last couple of weeks as we’ve had to kick into high gear harvesting and weeding. Luckily this week a new project has lifted my spirits.

Because I’m able to finally visualize just how much produce — and space to grow it — is needed to supply the masses I’ve enlisted, I have gone into what I like to call a “New York patio design mode” in order to squish in as many veggie varieties as possible. With this in mind, I decided to employ vertical garden ideas to grow our vegetables up at Racey Gardens.

Zucchini squash stretched out across walkways at Racey Gardens in 2012. (Nicole Nejad, The Denver Post)

Sure, soil and fertilizer and varieties are important in planning a garden and reaping big harvests. But design and infrastructure also make a big difference in how much you can plant.

This summer, my minor seed-buying addiction has left me with more than six varieties of squash in addition to a few kinds of melons and cucumbers that I just have to try — but where to put them all?

Since I have so many varieties of veggies there is limited space for voluminous trailing creatures like those within the Cucurbitaceae family, and the only way to plant them all will be to get spatially creative with trellising.

Tomato giants

Even though I’m a new gardener, I’ve long known that plants like tomatoes need to be staked, but what I recently learned is that indeterminate varieties, grown in a strong and tall infrastructure of concrete wire mesh, will end the summer as 6 to 7-ft tomato skyscrapers. I’m giddy just thinking of all the tomatoes I’ll harvest off these towering giants.

The best news about this option is that the concrete mesh is relatively cheap at around $25 for an 8-by-20-foot sheet.

Peas, beans and cucumbers

Cucumbers, pole beans and trailing nasturtiums look pretty on a rustic teepee made with sticks and twine. (Nicole Nejad, The Denver Post)

Pole beans will climb up lines of twine to make a vertical living wall. (Nicole Nejad, The Denver Post)

For the pole beans and cucumbers, discarded tree trimmings, a ball of twine, some wire and a few stakes were all I needed to build cozy teepees and trellised walls.

The twirling vines now have a structure to climb up and around the edges of my garden.

And now to the squash…

Father and daughter are two peas in a pod when it comes to engineering solutions around the house. (Nicole Nejad, The Denver Post)

Because I’m the daughter of an engineer, I can’t imagine gardening without a little experimentation. Since I know that the cucumbers will go up a trellis, I began to wonder whether or not their bushy cousins, the squashes, would do the same.

Tiny pole beans reaching up to twine supports that won’t hack it for squash. (Nicole Nejad, The Denver Post)

After conducting some research I discovered that I’m not the first urban garden pioneer to think of growing my squash up, but it does appear that few embark on this upward agricultural feat.

Because squash is larger and much heavier than the average pole bean or cucumber, I know that my tree branch and twine supports just aren’t going to cut it. For these mammoth vines, I will look to heavily-laden tomato plants for inspiration – and the trick is the concrete mesh.

Summer and winter squashes are heavy producers that will fill garden baskets all summer. (Nicole Nejad, The Denver Post)

My hypothesis is that concrete mesh, nailed to a frame of discarded fence posts, leaned against a sunny wall of my house, will provide just enough support for squash to fly to the sky. And I’ll have enough space to try out several different varieties of zucchini and winter squashes to spice up my fall cornucopia.

With any luck, I’ll be begging for a ladder later this summer. I’ll let you know come August.

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Becky Hensley is the co-founder of Share Denver - a community craft space in Park Hill. She's also the proud Ninja-in Chief of the Denver Craft Ninjas -- a women’s crafting collective dedicated to keeping the DIY spirit alive through laughter, shared skills, and cocktails.

Colorado native Mark Montano is an international designer, artist, author and television personality. He has appeared on TLC’s “While You Were Out” and “10 Years Younger,” as well as “My Celebrity Home” on the Style Network, “She’s Moving In” on We TV, “The Tony Danza Show” on ABC, and “My Home 2.0” on Fox.